Abstract:

It’s a widely accepted belief that the formal presentation of content by the teacher – the lecture method- is the prevalent way of teaching among Turkish faculty members. Although a well-presented formal lecture has many advantages, in this method teaching is regarded only as a transmission of information in which learners remain highly dependent on lecturer and their major responsibility is solely to remember the lecture content. It’s logical to assume that, the evaluations of the pre-service teachers on the lecture method may foreshadow the instructional methods they are going to prefer in their future teaching career. In this connection, the purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of the lecture method on undergraduate students from the student perception, and to collect their alternative solution offers to overcome the tediousness of the method. The participants were the students from the departments of English Language and Literature of private and state universities who came to Selcuk University to participate in a program on pedagogical formation in the 2007-2008 academic year. The most prominent advantage of the study conducted by the participation of aforementioned students was the opportunity to make comparisons of approaches to that instructional method observed in various universities. Conducting focus group interviews, data was obtained from 38 students from 7 different universities and was analyzed by two researchers independently. The findings revealed that students were highly displeased with the faculty members’ common approach to the method and their suggestions may be of a real help for those who lecture in Universities.

Keywords:

lecture method, instructional methods.